Poor customer service

I am extremely upset by the rudeness and lack of customer service I am receiving from Air Malta. I cancelled my flight on February 19 and I have never received a cancellation invoice despite requesting it several times. Worse still, I have never received the refund nearly four months later.

When I ring up from the UK, I am left on hold for 15 minutes (twice) before being told the airline has not started refunding customers for flights cancelled this year.

I am not in the business of financing a national airline with my money, I am in the business of feeding my family. By holding on to my money, Air Malta is making this much harder.

Every other airline has refunded me within two weeks but Air Malta sees fit to hold on to my money for four months and still refuses to pay simply stating that there is a backlog of similar cases, which is a ridiculous response.

It makes me wonder whether the company is withholding money due to clients to actually finance the airline and I would question the legality of this.

When I spoke to a certain Lynn she refused to help or let me speak to anyone of a more senior level and even refused to give me the name of the managing director. She was actually not just unhelpful but also rude.

I would ask that this money is rightfully refunded to me without any further delay and I want a reply to this letter.

PETER MIZZI – London, UK

People with disabilities can contribute to society

We would like to express our disappointment with the stand adopted by the  Commission for the Rights of Persons with Disability in support of IVF embryos testing.

Such a position is seriously undermining all the efforts of the disabled people’s movement in Malta in the past few decades to introduce the social model of disability, which places the responsibility of disablement also on the barriers found in society and the environment.

Through such stances, we are reverting to the medical model of disability, which only considers the biological impairment of a person with disability, thus putting the responsibility solely on the individual.

By choosing to discard embryos with genetic impairments, we are assuming that the life of someone with an impairment is not worth living. Who is to tell or, indeed, predict what one’s life will be like at that stage? The emphasis here is only on the ‘burden’ or the ‘suffering’ of a person who has an impairment.

How can prospective parents make an informed choice if they are only presented with the negative consequences of an impairment? Indeed, there is much more to the life of a person who has a disability.

Apart from the above, this position in favour of the amendments to the IVF legislation will indirectly increase intolerance towards people with genetic conditions who are already born, that is, because they should have been eliminated at an earlier stage.

Are human beings to be valued according to their genotype? Who will decide which conditions should go on the list or not? Where will we draw the line?

Instead of discarding ‘imperfect’ embryos, we should be focusing on providing more support services, a barrier-free environment and a more inclusive society that is free from such assumptions.

People with disabilities can also contribute much to society if provided with the right support and opportunities but they have to be given a chance to live first.

VICKIE GAUCI, Lecturer, Department of Disability Studies, Faculty for Social Well-being, University of Malta; FR MARTIN MICALLEF, Director, Id-Dar tal-Providenza; AMY CAMILLERI ZAHRA, assistant lecturer, Department of Disability Studies, Faculty for Social Well-being, University of Malta; MARCHITA MANGIAFICO, National Parents’ Society of Persons with Disability; MARTHESE MUGLIETTE, Malta Federation of Organisations Persons with Disability; RITA VELLA, member of Muscular Dystrophy Group; CARMEN GRECH member of the Gozo Association for the Deaf.

Action please

The Lija cemetery lies in the middle of the road which from the Birkirkara bypass leads to Mosta. It is undoubtedly one of the busiest roads in Malta.

To access the cemetery, mourners and visitors have to take their chances with the constant and usually fast traffic. No zebra crossing and/or traffic lights exist to ensure a safe crossing; thereby placing life and limb at considerable risk.

The parish authorities claim that repeated requests for remedial action, to the local council and to the powers that be, have led to no results. 

In these circumstances will the ministry of transport, and/or whoever is responsible for finding solutions to such urgent matters, kindly take note of this matter and provide a remedy.

JOSEPHINE PORTELLI – Lija

Personal information

HSBC wrote to me recently requesting me to provide intrusive, personal and, in my vie completely irrelevant information.

Complying with the bank’s request would involve my breaching the Data Protection Act and its regulations, which is something I simply will not do.

But for not doing so, I have already been threatened with petty sanctions, despite my having banked there uninterruptedly for the past 65 years, following its transition from Barclays to Mid-Med and, subsequently/currently, HSBC

“In my own interests” HSBC wants me to furnish it with full details with regard to any property I may own. They want to know the following: date of purchase; value at time of purchase; how they were funded at time of purchase; properties’ value now; whether held solely or jointly; description/inventory of any art or jewellery collection I may own.

I again refuse to make such a disclosure because, even assuming that I owned such collections, this would expose me to having my home burgled, to blackmail and to violence against my own person and that of my family members.

Positively, HSBC did not want to know my date of death, actual or estimated, but negatively, and take this as a given, after my passing, it will certainly harass my widow and heirs,and will hold on to my deposits for up to two years before releasing them.

On a different but related note, the bank also wrote to one of my grandchildren, who works in IT, requesting the source of a €250 cheque he had deposited in his account.

The cheque was a gift from me and was drawn on the very same HSBC branch. This grandchild has been earning on average €4,000 monthly for the past six years  and his salary is credited directly to his account.

His home and car loans are fully paid off and he is now considering buying another property as an investment and for reletting.

Turning now to BOV, I needed to cash a €28,000 cheque, drawn in my name by a notary public, the funds being the non-refundable deposit for a property sold by a client.

When I presented the cheque for encashment, I was told that the bank’s own regulations permitted it only to cash cheques up to the value of €2,500.

Because my client needed his money in cash, the issuing notary had to write out 13 cheques in lieu of this.

To add insult to injury I was charged €65, or €5 per cheque for this non-service.

Not only are these two banks behaving badly, they are behaving very badly indeed.

While I appreciate the fact that money laundering issues and this whole grey-listing mess now forces the average Joe to go through all this hassle, perhaps the time is now ripe for our finance minister, whose government, ultimately and technically is responsible for getting us here in the first place,  to propose and to introduce a banking ombudsman with teeth.

GODFREY GAUCI MAISTRE LLD – Valletta

Feasts should be in winter

Studies have shown that, for the past seven years, global temperatures have been the hottest on record.

In view of this, I urge the organisers of our titular feasts to take into consideration the great discomfort that these feasts are causing to all those who participate in them or organise them, from the youth who decorate the streets in the terrible heat to the bandsmen and the church musicians and church ministers (priests et al) and so many others. 

Since climate change will continue to be the cause of unbearable summer temperatures, I would like to seriously suggest to the powers that be to consider moving the celebration of our titular feasts to winter.  After all, many of the liturgical memorials of the saints we revere are observed at a time when the temperature levels are quite lower.  

Such a radical change, though revolutionary, will prove beneficial to one and all in the long run. 

FR GEOFFREY ATTARD – Victoria